WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says it will hear arguments over the evidence a federal judge can consider in the lawsuit over the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman is currently presiding over a trial to determine if Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross acted legally when he decided to include the citizenship question on the decennial census for the first time since 1950.
That trial is expected to conclude soon. The justices set arguments for Feb. 19.
The high court had previously allowed the trial to go forward.
The issue for the court is whether Furman may include the deposition of acting assistant attorney general John Gore and other evidence that was not part of the official record the Commerce Department compiled.
It’s not unreasonable to regard this as one of the early cases toward determining to what extent SCOTUS will allow Republicans to deter voting by certain of “those people”.
Sadly, this to me wreaks of the SC stepping into a case which at the moment seems to be damaging the administration. If so, is their purpose simply to put a stop to the proceedings?
Now we will see how far the Federalist Society and their Confederate States of America cohort tide has risen.
Presumably Ross doesn’t want this evidence to be admitted and is asking the Trump-Roberts Court to micromanage the trial in his favor—and the ‘court’ is happy to oblige. Hard to tell, as usual TPMs legal reporting leaves something to be desired.
They’re in a bind. Because they’d like to limit consideration to the (falsified) official record in this case, but that sets a precedent that will make it harder for judges to consider extraneous evidence when they want to strike down other regulatory decisions that are less favorable to rich republicans. (Imo, of course).